


A Passage through the Galaxy: Space Pirate Maximilien Robespierre

by girodelles_waifu



Series: A Passage Through the Galaxy [1]
Category: Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu | Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Hikari Furu Michi | A Passage Through the Light - Takarazuka Revue
Genre: (i will add the berubara tag to this fic once oscar turns up which she probably will), Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Daimons in Space: The Musical, F/M, M/M, Other, authentic Incompetent Space Pirate Action, but it is attached to a planned berubara/gineiden crossover, featuring Vintage Murder Robots, i am not sure if any actual gineiden ppl are gonna turn up, max is The Worst Pirate, not technically RPF but i guess if u wanna take it that way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-05-28 01:09:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 16,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15037355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girodelles_waifu/pseuds/girodelles_waifu
Summary: Max was supposed to be a lawyer. He was not supposed to accidentally become the captain of a space pirate ship. He definitely wasn't supposed to become the object of the affections of a centuries-old piece of sentient weaponry.But hey, what's a little dismembering in the support of democracy?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm only posting this bc sending individual text files to the ppl who want to read it is a Major Pain honestly but if anyone else things it is fun, awesome.

"Max, trouble."

Max pushed the lever to give Marie-Anne, sitting in the seat next to him, full control of the helm of the _Liberte_. "What's wrong?" he asked, turning his chair around just as Georges entered the cockpit, engine oil smudged on his face and cuffs and a half-melted piece of metal in one hand.

Max wasn't exactly an expert on spaceship parts, but as the Liberte produced them a lot he had picked up the knack of knowing how bad it was by the face Georges was making. Some of his scowl could probably be attributed to the mess his clothes were in, but even so this looked like a worse situation than usual.

"The damn hyperdrive coupler overheated again," Georges said, which supported Max's theory; he could actually remember the name of this part, which only happened when something broke down enough or badly enough to put them in a really dire situation.

"Do we have a spare?" Max asked, but by the 'again' he had a good guess what the answer was.

"This _is_ the spare," Georges replied.

" _Merde._ How far can we get without it? If we head to a supply outpost we might be able to buy a replacement..."

"We're pirates, Max."

"Right." He was still getting used to that, even after more than a year. "We could wire Madame Roland and see if she will trade us one?"

"You mean the Madame Roland who has tried to turn you in for the reward six times now?" The Liberte bounced slightly as Marie-Anne whipped her head around to stare sternly at Max.

"Was it really six?"

"I made lunch...oh, what is it now?" Camille said as he opened the door to the cockpit, nearly dumping Georges and the hyperdrive coupler into the corridor.

"We're stuck in the middle of nowhere with no hyperdrive coupler," Marie-Anne explained.

"I might be able to fix up something to get the hyperdrive working for one or two jumps, but nothing that will last," Georges said. "Is there anywhere around here we can scavenge parts that won't get us arrested or backstabbed for the seventh time in a row?"

"I really don't think it's been six times already..." Max said to no-one in particular as Camille pulled out a navigation disc and began poking at the projection.

"There are a couple of Phezzani trading outposts...those are risky, but safer than the Alliance or the Empire. Sinbad V is Imperial-held, but it's mostly farms and the government doesn't really bother with it. If we moved fast enough we could get the coupler out of one of their transport ships and be gone before they could get a distress call out. Or...hm. That's interesting."

"Science experiment interesting, or getting shot at a lot interesting?" Georges asked.

"Over here." Camille swept a hand over the projection, zooming in on one particular star system. "It's an old Imperial base."

"That sounds like getting shot at a lot."

"Darknet data says that it's been abandoned for centuries. It's only one jump away, and if we can take out a few security drones, all the parts we would need for years are ours for the taking."

"Sounding even more like getting shot at a lot," Georges grumbled. "We're going to Sinbad V, right Max?"

"I mean...if we have to fight something wouldn't it be better it it was security drones, and not innocent farmers? We're trying to spread democracy, after all, so..."

Georges pinched the bridge of his nose. "You are _the worst_ pirate. Marie-Anne, you're not going to humor this--"

"Coordinates to the base are in."

"I don't know why I even try."

* * *

Some hours later, after a very shaky hyperjump, the _Liberte_ landed on Sondheim Imperial Mainenance Station. Despite the fact that their approach wasn't at all stealthy, none of the security drones still orbiting the planet reacted, and the _Liberte_ settled unmolested on a more intact section of the deteriorating runway.

"Maybe they're offine?" Camille suggested.

"Maybe they're trying to keep something in," Georges said, then laughed. "As if."

Max glanced at the atmospheric readout. "It looks okay to breathe, anyway," he called into the cabin. "Who wants to go?"

"I'll stay with the ship," Camille said. "I can get a scan of the base from here and let you know if I see anything promising."

Marie-Anne buckled her toolbelt around her waist and put a hard hat on before slipping her shoulder holsters on over her pink leather jacket. Georges had added a bandolier of flashbombs to the gunbelt he was already wearing.

"What do I get?" Max asked as he joined them by the door.

Georges and Marie-anne exchanged glances.

* * *

"Somehow I don't think this is the order of things on most pirate vessels."

"Hold the flashlight steadier, Max, I can't see the panel."

Max sighed and raised the flashlight to better light the access panel of the storage vault Georges was trying to break into. The leather satchel of spare parts he had slung around his shoulders was already half full after less than an hour, but Georges wasn't close to satisfied yet.

"There! Got it."

Max started to step forward but Marie-Anne blocked his path. "Wait," she said firmly, blaster out and ready as she edged carefully through the now-open door. A few moments later, the lights inside the vault flickered to life. "Okay, it looks safe," she called. "Come on."

Max followed Georges through the door into an expansive room full of cabinets, work tables, and storage racks. Marie-Anne and Georges were quickly occupied with rummaging through the cabinets and stripping down appliances for parts, so Max dumped the satchel on one of the work tables to begin exploring himself. While he appreciated his friend and lover's efforts to protect him, it did begin to feel smothering at times, especially aboard a tiny ship like the _Liberte_.


	2. Chapter 2

The storage vault was quite small and dull for anyone not as mechanically-minded as Georges and Marie-Anne, so Max had soon exhausted all points of interest in the room. There were some rations in a cabinet that claimed on the label to be stable indefinitely, but as the Sondheim base was old enough to still have paper files--paper!--Max didn't feel bored enough to test that out, even for brownies.

Max absently aimed the flashlight at the corners of the room that weren't lit up by the shuddering bank of fluorescent lights that were hooked up to the backup generator. Suddenly, something near the floor glinted silver.

"Hey, there's..."

Georges and Marie-Anne didn't respond, being noisily occupied with tearing apart some poor hoverbike Marie-Anne had dragged in from outside, so Max decided he might as well investigate without them.

The silver glint turned out to be a handle attached to the bottom of one of the wall panels. When Max tugged at it, fully expecting it to be locked, it slid upwards, the noise almost swallowed up in the buzz of Marie-Anne's electric saw.

Max leaned carefully through the doorway. The flashlight lit up a flight of cement stairs, and what looked like a second workshop below them.

When he was halfway down the stairs, the communicator on his wrist buzzed. "Max?"

"Camille? What's wrong?"

"You just walked off my map."

"What? But I'm right here."

"My readout says 'right here' would make you buried alive. Please tell me that hasn't happened. Again."

"Of course it hasn't--I'm perfectly fine, Camille. Your readout must be wrong, that's all." That incident had been Georges' fault in the first place, anyway.

"Be careful. Who knows what they're keeping down there if there's enough insulation to block my scan."

"Don't worry, it looks like the only thing I'm about to get buried in is these stupid paper files," Max said as he stepped off the bottom step to see a row of filing cabinets. "Nothing interesting down here at--what the...?"

"...What the what. Max?"

"Hang on."

The very edge of the flashlight's beam had briefly illuminated something that looked like a human face. An old propaganda poster, probably, or just an arrangement of old parts that were tricking his eye in the low light and strange situation.

Max took a few steps forward to figure out exactly what he was looking at. After one or two frozen moments, he jumped back with a gasp, knocking against one of the file cabinets behind him and crashing backwards with it.

The noises from the upper level stopped. "...Max? Max! Where are you!?"

"I'm right down here, Georges!" Max called back, pushing away a heap of paper that had slid down on top of him. "I'm fine. I think. Probably."

"How did you even--"

"Max, we've _talked_ about this!"

"For heaven's sake, it's not like I'm an infant," Max grumbled as Georges and Marie-Anne dashed down the stairs. Even so, he didn't object to Georges helping him up.

"What's down here, anyway?" Marie-Anne said, setting down a large lantern on top of one of the still upright filing cabinets and switching it on. "Oh. Oh, God."

There was a severed human head sitting on a desk covered with tools and antique paper plans. On a workbench next to the desk lay a dissected corpse.

That the head and body were so perfectly preserved after more than two hundred years defied all logic, and after a few moments of processing, Max realized what they were actually looking at.

"A robot?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> are robots a part of LoGH canon? i dunno, i dont think so  
> do i care? also no dont @ me

Max took a deep breath as the initial panic died down. Marie-Anne was still holding her blaster at the ready as Georges approached the workbench holding the robot's mechanical body.

Curious, Max approached the desk where the head was sitting.

Robots were supposed to be a fantasy of satellite dramas--although there were rumors of old imperial experiments floating around the Darknet, nobody really believed them. Max had assumed that they were only propaganda stories that had become inflated over the decades or centuries.

Spread across the desk were blueprints, circuitry diagrams, and photos of half-assembled limbs. The head was propped up slightly against a stack of technical manuals. Its eyes were half-closed--Max could see dark teal irises under its long lashes. Somehow that made it more eerie than if they had been fully open or closed.

Whoever had built the robot, they had certainly taken a great deal of care over its looks. Max stepped forward, nearly entranced, and reached out to pick up the head.

It was strangely light--Max had read once how much a human head weighed, but humans weren't built of plastic and circuit boards, after all. Max gently began brushing away some of the coating of dust that covered it. The robot's skin was disconcertingly realistic to the touch, if cold, skimming over high cheekbones and delicate, androgynous features. Its light brown hair, falling in an impractical wave of curls nearly over one eye, rustled slightly in the breeze coming down the stairs.

Max certainly didn't have much conception of what a real life robot was supposed to look like, but he definitely had the impression it should involve more screws and metal plates. This looked more like a fashion doll.

"Max, maybe you shouldn't play with that."

"I'm just looking, what harm can that do? Maybe you shouldn't be poking around at its insides, Georges."

Georges was currently wrist-deep in the robot's open torso, and looked about ready to take the electric saw to it. "Hey, these are really advanced components. We could upgrade the Liberte's systems beyond anything Madame Roland has," Georges said.

Watching Georges treat something so realistically human-looking so cavalierly began to make Max feel a little ill, and he turned back to the desk, trying to ignore Georges and Marie-Anne's soft conversation about what the various bits could be used for. Max shifted the head carefully to a one-handed grip so he could leaf through some of the scattered plans and photos. He couldn't make out any of the complicated programming script or mathematical formulas, and what actual text there was seemed to be written in old Imperial military codes.

Finally, he found a large color photograph of what looked like the robot in working order, standing in front of a cement wall wearing a black Imperial uniform and a glassy expression. At the bottom of the photo was written a single plain-text word in silver pen.

"...Angel?" Max read.

"Program activated: Angel. Systems rebooting."


	4. Chapter 4

After that, things were a bit of a blur for a minute. Somebody screamed - all three of them denied all potential responsibility for this afterwards - and Camille began shouting panicky demands to know what was happening over the comm.

Max instinctually flung the head away from himself. Marie-Anne grabbed it out of the air then also tossed it at Georges with a yelp of disgust.

"Do you mind," the head said after this disturbing game of catch had gone on for a few moments.

"Ah. Yes. Sorry." Max set it back down on the desk and took a step back, wiping his hands on his jacket.

"Now what?" Marie-Anne said.

"Let's just go, alright?" Georges said. "Let's just go and close the place up behind us and never speak of this again."

"Um, can you...turn off?" Max asked.

"I'd rather not."

"Oh. That's fair." Max turned back to the others. "Now what?"

"Well, we've already established you aren't going to anything I say, so I'm all out of suggestions," Georges said, his arms crossed sulkily.

"Does it just fit right back on...?" Max picked the head up and carried it over to where the body was laying.

"Okay, not that, actually. Definitely don't do that," Georges said just as Max found the catch that would snap the head back onto the metal spine. " _Merde_ , why do I even try."

"But it feels wrong to just leave it!" Max protested.

"No it doesn't! It feels like a good way to not die, which is one of my favorite things, not that you've ever tried it!"

Max was fairly sure he was being insulted but not exactly sure how. "Well, I'm the captain, so—"

"God, I can't believe I let you be the captain."

"You said I should be the captain!"

"Enough!" Marie-Anne shouted.

"Sorry." "Yes." Max and Georges said quickly.

"More important things happening," Marie-Anne pointed out, gesturing behind her at the robot, which was now sitting up on the table reassembling its torso, serenely unbothered by their argument.

"I can't believe you've done this, Max," Georges grumbled, pulling out his blaster.

"Hey, don't!" Max pushed his arm down. "We can't just kill it!"

"We definitely can, watch me."

"No!"

By this point the robot had closed the open panel on its chest, thrown off the sheet covering its lower limbs (revealing black uniform pants, like the ones it had been wearing in the photograph) and slipped down off the table. It stood there staring at them curiously.

"Look," Georges said, yanking his arm out of Max's grip, "we don't know what this thing can do, but considering that the Empire had it locked in a secret room in an abandoned base surrounded by security drones programmed to keep anything from leaving the planet, it's definitely not safe to leave it activated. I know you won't like this, but just let me handle things this time, alright? Besides, it's not even alive, not properly. It's just like shooting down the security drones outside."


	5. Chapter 5

The robot didn't move as Georges pointed the blaster at its forehead, although its eyes widened sharply and Max could hear a small mechanical fan somewhere inside it begin whirring loudly.

Marie-Anne was standing back, watching with her arms folded. Max could see some regret on her face, but her expression showed more professional disappointment in destroying a fine piece of engineering than sympathy for a sentient being.

Georges and Marie-Anne had always been the ones to make the hard decisions during the Liberte's voyages. They saw it as their way of protecting Max from the dangerous world they were in, he knew...but he wished they would realize that the hard decisions didn't always have to be made. The world could be better than that, sometimes.

Max stepped forward.

Georges sighed, pointing the blaster upwards so Max wasn't in the line of fire. "Max, get out of my shot."

"I can't let you just kill it!" Max protested, not moving from where he was standing in front of the robot.

"We have to! Can't you be realistic for once?"

The robot's slender fingers wrapped lightly around Max's arm as it looked around his shoulder. He could feel a slight, warm vibration through his coatsleeve.

"Max..."

"I'm not moving."

"Look, Max--" Marie-Anne began.

"No! Let me make my own decision for once! The Liberte stands for freedom and democracy for all sentient beings in the galaxy - you can shoot through me, if you want, but I'm not moving!"

Georges began to lower the blaster slowly, then paused, his grip tightening on the handle.

Max froze, closing his eyes tightly. Georges surely wouldn't...but. He had come so close before - the memories of being dragged towards the airlock with the muzzle of a blaster pressed against his head were still vivid. Despite the whimsical change in his alliegances a year ago, Georges was still a dangerous man.

"God, fine," Georges muttered finally. Max opened his eyes to see him putting the blaster back in its holster. "But we're not keeping it!"


	6. Chapter 6

Camille was sitting on the ramp of the Liberte and jumped up when the explorers came into view. "Thank heavens you're all alright! I couldn't tell what was going on in there with all the shouting...who is that?"

"This is..." Max started, then paused as he realized he didn't have any idea what to call the robot. It hadn't spoken since Max had stopped Georges from shooting it, and it hadn't let go of Max's arm either, except to put on a jacket Marie had found to cover up the panels in its chest. Max had ended up leading it by the hand out of the building and back to where they had left the Liberte.

"It's the vintage Imperial murder robot Max has had the brilliant idea of taking with us as his new pet," Georges said before he could continue.

"It wasn't like that!" Max protested.

"No, I'm pretty sure it was," Marie said.

Camille blinked. "Max, you can't just...oh, nevermind," he sighed. "Let's just get out of here before more security drones show up. Some kind of alarm signal went off while you were down there."

"So, what are we going to call your friend?" Georges asked once they were back in the Liberte, preparing to take off. Marie had taken over piloting the small ship, which left Georges, Max, and Camille to deal with their new passenger.

"Uh..." Max gently guided the robot towards one of the chairs in the main deck as Georges and Camille strapped themselves in - the Liberte's gravity systems tended to stop functioning properly during takeoff and landing. "Do you have a name?"

The robot blinked, tilting its head to one side slightly.

"What did the people from the base call you?"

Its face suddenly went flat and static, its eyes widening again. "I am designated Humanoid Assault Device 57-JU3T."

Camille made a soft, sympathetic sound, but Georges looked, if possible, even more displeased by the whole situation.

"I can't call you that, that's awful!" Max exclaimed. "Isn't there something else? What about that thing that woke you up...Angel?"

The robot stared at Max for a long moment. "Anything you want," it said finally.


	7. Chapter 7

_**Approximately 5000 time zones away...** _

"Whu..."

Admiral Reinhardt von Lohengramm blinked awake to the sound of blaring alarms.

"Reinhardt!" Kirchheiss turned away from where he had been standing by a window, poking furiously at a tablet. "I'm sorry, I can't turn it off."

"What in the galaxy is going on?" Reinhardt demanded, reaching for his uniform jacket as he slid out of bed. Kirchheiss was already mostly dressed, although his jacket was still half-unbuttoned.

"I'm not sure. It's a warning alarm of some kind. A really...really old one, though. _Verdammt_ , it's so LOUD!" Kirchheiss snarled with frustration, jabbing at the tablet.

"Give it here." Reinhardt snatched the tablet to see what Kirchheiss had been fussing with; a control panel for the military alert system, apparently. He was immediately at as much of a loss as Kirchheiss had been to figure out where the alarm was coming from or how to turn it off, but of course he couldn't let Kirchheiss know that. Even his higher level of access yielded no results. The alarm was so loud he could barely think.

"Reinhardt, can you--"

"Shut up, I'm trying to--"

Suddenly everything went silent. Reinhardt thought he might cry with relief.

"Your Excellency."

Well. There went that perfectly good plan.

"Oberstein. What is it?"

"I have a report on the obsolete alarm system that just went off. I'm sure you're already aware of its source."

It was really too early in the morning for Oberstein's usual sarcastic dance. "Report, Oberstein," Reinhardt snapped.

"Very well, Sir. Several hours ago, an emergency alarm was triggered on the abandoned Imperial base of Sondheim IV, on the border of the no-man's-land between the Empire and the Alliance. The alarms here went off when the signal reached our sector of space."

"Why would you bother me with that? It's just some scavengers who ran into a security drone. Why do we even have that alarm?"

"We have that alarm, sir, because the Sondheim IV base was used as containment for a disabled weapon of mass destruction that has now been reactivated."

Reinhardt froze in the middle of buttoning his jacket. "What."

"A sentient weapon of mass destruction."

"...call a meeting."


	8. Chapter 8

"According to the signal sent from Sondheim IV, the robot weapon code-named ANGEL was re-activated approximately 18 hours ago. It had been shut down 250 years ago after proving too difficult to control and showing abilities to adjust its own programming, and the Sondheim base had been quarantined by banks of security drones since then...next slide please, Kirchheiss."

"Right. Sorry." Kirchheiss smothered a yawn and reached for his can of coffee.

Oberstein continued, gesturing at the photographs projected on the wall of the Admiralty Headquarters' conference room. "The Humanoid Assault Device project was initiated three centuries ago, with the intention of developing a sufficiently human-looking robot, with enough capabilities of autonomous action, to infiltrate and destroy enemy forces and infrastructure." Without Oberstein telling them, Reinhardt was sure nobody in the room would have realized the thing in the photographs wasn't human. It was unusually beautiful (no more than he was, of course), but otherwise perfectly human-looking when clothed.

"After 30 years of development, the most successful result of the project was HAD 57-JU3T, which was used in several covert operations against Alliance bases. However, after several years, it began exhibiting erratic behaviour and attempting to attack its handlers. After it failed to respond to various measures used in hopes of forcing compliance, it was disabled and left inactive on the Sondheim base until the research developed further. However, the HAD project was shut down before that could happen, and many records were lost during transitions between paper and digital, which meant that no further attempts to revive it were made."

Reinhardt leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his vanilla spice latte. "So why the alarm now?"

"I'm coming to that. Next slide, please."

The next slide showed a short, looping video from a wildly spinning camera. "This is the only footage transmitted by 57-JU3T before it deactivated its internal cameras and tracking devices. It is recorded to have the ability to adjust its own programming, so we must assume that there will be no further signals recieved from it. However, despite the state of the recording that was sent, facial recognition software was able to identify those responsible for activating it."

The video froze and zoomed in on a blurry image of a dark-haired man in a purple leather duster. "This is Georges Desmoulins, known pirate. He is wanted by both the Empire and the Alliance, but vanished after a mutiny a year ago. This..." The video advanced several seconds, then froze on an upside-down image of a young woman in a pink dress, who seemed to be in the middle of shouting something. "...is Marie-Anne Benoit, professional assassin. Her movements for the last several months are also unknown. And this..." the video advanced again, freezing on the clearest image yet, of a man with brown hair and a bewildered expression. "...this is...someone who was not identifiable in the software. Probably just some nobody they brought with them in case they ran into any deathtraps."

The next slide showed blueprints of the various weapons systems the robot was equipped with. "The most likely scenario is that Desmoulins and Benoit may have heard rumours about Sondheim IV and gone to investigate. However, all three of them are almost certainly dead now, so the main issue is that 57-JU3T may have used their ship to get off the planet. It is vital that it be captured or neutralized quickly, or it might be capable of destabilizing the entire border region."

"How are we supposed to find it?" Reinhardt asked.

"It is incapable of changing its appearance, so theoretically the facial tracking software should be able to find it. But it's more likely that we'll be able to find it by the trail of destruction and distress signals. Any questions?"

"Would we be able to use it, if we retrieve it?" Reinhardt asked. "It seems like a waste to just hunt down and destroy it."

"With the advances in technology since the time it was deactivated, it seems likely that we would be able to regain control over its programming. However, there is no way of doing so remotely, so it would have to be apprehended first."

"Time to start robot hunting, then," Reinhardt said, taking another sip of the latte and discovering the cup was empty. "Kirchheiss, order some more coffee."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you dont have someone exposit for 10 minutes is it really a gineiden fic  
> also lattes exist in the empire because shut up  
> (and also because reinhardt is a garbage child whose special order is probably about 6 feet long)


	9. Chapter 9

Despite the addition of a highly weaponized and potentially unstable robot to the crew of the Liberte, surprisingly little changed for the next few days. Angel spoke and did very little, and apart from its odd insistence on having Max in sight (or preferably, phyical contact) it would have been easy to forget it was there most of the time.

After leaving the Sondheim base, the Liberte put in at a small forest planet so that Georges and Marie-Anne could attempt repairs to the hyperdrive coupler with the antique parts they had scavenged. Max and Camille headed to the planet's main town to pick up other supplies, leaving Angel in what appeared to be its 'sleep mode' in the main cabin.

"Do you think Angel will be okay?" Max said as they walked through the sleepy forest. It was sometime before dawn, although due to the planet's quick rotation it would be late afternoon by the time they reached the town. "You've seen how Georges looks at them...trying to figure out what parts they're made of."

"I think Georges is probably the one we need to be more worried about in that case," Camille pointed out. "Your new friend isn't exactly helpless."

"Maybe, but--" Max stopped as Camille froze, holding up one hand. "What?" he whispered.

Camille gestured back over his shoulder, slowly reaching down for his blaster with his other hand.

"Captain?"

Max sighed with relief, and Camille dropped his hand.

"Angel, what are you doing here?" Max asked, turning around. Even after Max had done proper introductions for everyone, Angel still insisted on calling him 'Captain'. Maybe they felt the military-esque ranking terminology was more familiar; they certainly weren't used to names as a concept in general. It still made Max feel a bit uncomfortable, though. It wasn't as if his position really meant much, or gave him any actual power over the others besides what they were willing to tolerate.

Angel was standing in the middle of the path, with the vaguely lost, blank expression that seemed to be their default most of the time. When they met Max's gaze, however, they shifted into an attempt at a smile--not a very good attempt, but for a first try it was certainly acceptable, and Max smiled back encouragingly.

"You weren't there," Angel said as they caught up to Max and Camille, and seemed to think no further explanation was necessary.

"Sorry," Max said. "But you probably shouldn't be so far from...oh, nevermind," he finished, as Angel caught hold of his sleeve. "We need to hurry up if we want to get to the town before dark, anyway."


	10. Chapter 10

The planet they had stopped on was an Imperial border state, but so remote that it was almost impossible to tell that there was any Imperial presence at all. Its main trades were farming and logging, and apart from occasional conscription of soldiers or laborers for the Imperial Fleet's shipyards, there was hardly anything there for the government to bother with. This was why Georges had decided on it as a safe place to stop, as there was little for pirates to bother with either.

Angel seemed content to follow Max and Camille around as they wandered through the market and general store, but Max still couldnt help worrying. Even if this was a sleepy farming town, he didn't have any way of predicting what Angel would do around other people in an open area like this.

As usual, Camille spent several minutes studying every notice left on the board where rural farmers or nomadic traders could post messages for each other. Finally, he picked up the stylus and wrote a brief message in his neat script, as well as the code for the Liberte's encrypted hailing channel.

"She'll run across one of my messages sometime, right?" he said to Max, as usual.

"Of course she will," Max replied, as usual.

Angel watched this little ritual of theirs curiously, but didn't ask any questions.

Camille stared at the message for a few more moments, then sighed and turned away. "Come on, let's finish shopping before it gets dark," he said.

Being able to purchase actual fresh fruit was a rarity for those living on the outskirts of Galactic society like the crew of the Liberte, so Max and Camille were soon burdened down with baskets of apples and oranges.

"Let me carry that, Captain," Angel said, pulling lightly at one of the baskets of apples as Camille paid one of the farmers for some sacks of flour.

Max was sure that if it came to a tug-of-war he had no way of winning, so he quickly let Angel take it away from him.

"We can have apple pie tomorrow!" Camille declared cheerfully as he returned. He started to hand Max one of the sacks of flour, but Angel intercepted it before Max could take it. "Oh. Thank you. I guess."

By this point, the sun was beginning to set, and they started back through the forest to the clearing where the Liberte had landed. Max felt a bit awkward not carrying anything, but every time he tried to take something from Camille, Angel would get to it before he could, and it didn't feel fair to let Angel just carry everything either - they were a being with rights of their own, not a mechanical servant. After a few more attempts, he gave up and started eating one of the apples. Even though it hadn't been that long since they had eaten, the quick passage of daytime on the planet made it feel much longer.

Max liked sunsets. He had seen surprisingly few of them, having lived in space for most of his life, so he walked slowly in order to enjoy the pink and amber light filtering through the trees.

"By the way," he said after they had walked silently for a while, "there was something I wanted to ask you about, Angel."

Angel blinked at him, which Max decided was probably as much encouragement as he would get to continue the conversation.

"Back on Sondheim...if I hadn't stopped Georges, what would you have done?"

"Wait, what," Camille said. "What happened on Sondheim?"

"My defense protocols would have activated," Angel replied immediately, without any change from their usual flat tone.

"...Ah."

"Wait, what? What defense protocols?"

"My defense protocols are very efficient."

"Max. What."

"My programming directs me to eliminate all threats with extreme prejudice."

"MAX. WHAT."

"Thank you Angel that's very interesting could you wait right there for just a second," Max interrupted rapidly, grabbing Camille's arm and pulling him over into the trees on the other side of the path.

"Max, what the hell!" Camille started, then glanced over his shoulder at Angel and dropped his voice into a sharp whisper. "You didn't tell me about this!"

"I forgot!"

"You 'forgot' to tell me that the pet robot you brought on board would happily kill all of us at any time if they felt scared? And almost killed all of you before you even got out of the base?"

It did sound bad when Camille put it that way. "Georges told you they were dangerous," Max protested.

"Yes, and I didn't believe him because Georges lives in a constant state of panic that you're going to get yourself killed by being too nice and trusting and he's apparently correct!"

That was a little unfair, Max thought. "Look, he's been fine so far," Max said. "Please don't tell Georges about this. You know he'll blow up about it all over again. It's not Angel's fault they're programmed like that..."

Camille glanced back at where Angel was standing, still holding the heaped up baskets of fruit and supplies. "God, fine," he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I can't believe you're making me feel sorry for the murder robot."


	11. Chapter 11

"Report."

"We examined the Sondheim HAD lab," Oskar Leuenthal said, trying to ignore the fact that that Wulfgang had spun his co-pilot's chair around and was currently taking selfies using the starscape as background. "There was no sign of the robot, but there were also no bodies found of the three treasure hunters from the video footage, although it did look like there had been a fight of some kind."

Wulfgang spun his chair back around, not taking his eyes off whatever stupid game he was now playing on his comm. "It could have killed them there and done a very good job hiding the bodies, but I did find one camera it didn't wipe that caught a couple seconds of them leaving the lab with it following them. It might have talked them into taking it back to their ship and then..." he made a sharp slicing motion with his free hand.

Reinhardt's projection frowned slightly, and Oskar could hear Oberstein whispering something faintly in the background. "Do you know what kind of ship they had?"

Oskar shrugged. "The security drones were all ambushed and shot down from angles that prevented any footage from beeing recorded, but we did find booster burns from their landing site and some scattered parts." He held up a half-melted hyperdrive coupler that had been thrown to the ground near where the ship had landed (apparently with some force, as one of the soldiers in the search party had found it half-buried in the soft dust). "The treasure hunters seem to have been using a small vessel of Alliance origin; exactly what model it is we're not sure, but in this region, someone might take notice of it if it were to put in at any of the nearby planets."

"Unfortunately..." Wulfgang paused for several seconds as combo scores piled up on his comm screen "...this region is packed with pirates and scavengers, and most of the local planets make a lot of money off of supplying them. So it might be difficult getting people to talk."

"Try to avoid anything that might alert it to the fact we're looking for it," Reinhardt said. "Judging by all reports of it, it shouldn't be able to avoid exposing itself for much longer."


	12. Chapter 12

**Several days later...**

"Max. Max!" Marie-Anne whispered sharply.

"Huh?"

"Put it on autopilot." Marie-Anne had already flipped the switch to put her side on autopilot as well, and there was a soft click as she pressed the remote lock for the pilot's cabin.

"Wha...oh!" Max blushed and flicked the switch just before Marie-Anne grabbed his arm and pulled him over onto her chair. Max laughed as he landed sprawled across her skirts, shifting into a more comfortable position and kissing her forehead lightly. "What brings this on?"

"Your new robot pet has been a bit of a third wheel lately," Marie-Anne said, putting an arm around his waist and pulling him closer.

"Oh...Angel does follow me around a bit, I guess..."

"'A bit', yes. And your cabin doesn't have a lock on it."

"I can see how that could be somewhat of an--" Max broke off as Marie-Anne wound a hand into his hair and pulled him in for a kiss.

Kisses with Marie-Anne were fiery sweet and electric; the universe could be exploding around them and Max would never notice. Marie-Anne had always been dangerously but charmingly entrancing, fascinating Max since the first moment they met, even before he had discovered that she had tracked him down to fulfill an assassination contract. There was no telling when she might change her mind on putting it off, but the risk just made it all feel more intense.

Finally, Max broke away, stroking her soft curls as he leaned down to kiss her neck, his other hand tracing down the curve of her hips.

"Oh...Max...Max. Max." Max blinked as she pushed him away. "Sorry. Comm."

Max turned around to see the flashing light on the console. "Can't we just ignore them?"

"...it's Madame Roland."

Max sighed, readjusting his jacket as Marie-Anne unlocked the pilot's cabin and patted her hair back into a presentable state. "Georges, Camille, can you come to the helm for a few minutes?"

"What's up?" Georges asked. Max was sure he noticed his blush and Marie-Anne's rumpled bodice, but he politely refrained from saying anything if so.

Camille was still wearing an apron. "Is this especially important? I don't want the bread to burn."

"Madame Roland is hailing us," Marie-Anne replied.

"What would she want?" Georges asked. "We haven't gone to her for anything in months, and we're not even in her territory right now."

"Well, we're about to find out. Brace yourselves." Marie-Anne slipped out of her chair and stepped back to where the others were standing near the doorway. Georges reached into the corridor and handed her a broom which she used to gingerly flip the comm switch.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE NOW YOU USELESS PACK OF IDIOTS." Max winced at the feedback as Madame Roland's voice burst through the speakers.

"Uh...Hi, Madame Roland?" Max said, feeling very glad the Liberte's ship comm was too outdated to have projection technology. "What's going on?"

"ARE YOU TRYING TO TELL ME YOU DON'T KNOW?"

"Well...yes? All we did was stop somewhere to buy apples?"

"APPLES."

"And I mean before that there was..."

"Max!" Georges hissed.

"BEFORE THAT WAS THERE MAYBE AN IMPERIAL SECRET WEAPON?"

"...maaaaaaybe?"

There was a long sigh and some muttered swearing on the other end of the comm. "THE DAMNED IMPERIAL FLEET IS POKING AROUND IN MY TERRITORY BECAUSE OF YOU, YOU STUPID CHILDREN!"

"Sorry about that..."

"JUST GET IT AWAY FROM MY SPACE BEFORE THEY CAN CAUSE ANY MORE TROUBLE."

"But we're not even in--"

"FURTHER AWAY!"

"Yes. Yes, okay. Sure. Yes. Bye, Madame Roland." Max could hear her taking another breath and dove for the comm switch before she could start shouting again.


	13. Chapter 13

_**A few days later...** _

"You know we probably shouldn't be here," Marie-Anne said, looking out through the cockpit window at the dingy courtyard surrounded by alleyways that they had somehow managed to land the Liberte in, with only a few inches to spare in some places. Max and Camille were busy outside, putting some tarps and camouflage nets over the small ship to hopefully prevent it being noticed.

"Not a lot of other places to hide out that aren't in Imperial territory or part of Madame Roland's space," Georges pointed out. "As long as we keep our heads down we should be fine in the Caravanserai for a few days."

"Yes, we'll definitely be fine in the largest outlaw and smuggler hideout in the empty zone, as long as nobody notices the ex-pirate, the assassin, the would-be rabble-rousing demagogue, and the Imperial secret weapon."

"Well...there's Camille, at least?" Georges tried, just as Camille tripped over one of the cables holding the tarp. "...It'll just be a few days until Madame Roland calms down and we can get through her territory into clear space. What's the worst that could happen?"

"I can't believe you said that."

* * *

Max sighed with relief as he, Angel, and Camille reached the marketplace. After a week of being stuck in the increasingly tense Liberte he had been dying to get outside again, even if it was only the smoggy alleys of the Caravanserai. He hadn't been able to have any private time with Marie-Anne since the landing, Georges was more on edge than usual, and he had to constantly worry that Camille would let something slip about what Angel had revealed about how dangerous they really were.

Georges had been reluctant to let Max and Camille out of the ship at all, but they needed supplies badly, especially fuel cells for the backup generator, and Georges and Marie-Anne were too recognizable to show their faces in public at the Caravanserai. He had finally given in after making them promise to be as discreet as possible. To this end, Max was wearing a knitted slouch hat pulled low over his bangs, Angel was wearing a hooded jacket of Georges', and Camille had a scarf tucked around the lower half of his face (which was practical anyway, considering the air quality). This wouldn't do much against facial recognition algorithms, but hopefully it was only humans they had to worry about.

Max's pack was already heavy, as Camille had quickly found an excellent deal on fuel cells. He was currently trying to foil Angel's attempts to get the pack away from him as Camille poked through tubs of MREs that had been stolen from either an Imperial or Alliance shipment--it was hard to tell, since they both came from the same manufacturers most of the time.

"Captain..."

"I'm fine, Angel...wait, what's that...noise..."

Camille looked up, then pulled Max back as a small, heavily armed ship suddenly dropped out of the smoggy sky over the market. "Slaver scout ship!" he shouted over the noise of the engines and screams of the marketgoers. "Come on!"

Max grabbed Angel's hand and the three of them bolted out of the market as another ship dropped.

"They won't chase us for long, we just need to get to the next level down," Camille said, sliding under a long table with Max and Angel following him.

"But the lift's back--" Max gestured across the market, which was already practically deserted, this being a near-daily occurrence in the Caravanserai--everyone except visitors already had their hiding places.

"If we can get to that bridge--" Camille lifted the tablecloth just long enough to point at one of the walkways over the train system "--we can jump down to the next level. They won't bother pursuing us where their ship can't reach, it's not worth it for them."

"Alright." Max crossed himself quickly. "Let's go."

They crept out from under the table, hiding behind it as they slipped quietly towards the bridge.

"Hey!"

"Damn it," Camille muttered, and then they were sprinting towards the bridge. Max ducked as a blaster flash hit the table right behind him.

"Captain, my defense protocols--"

"Not NOW, Angel!"

Another blaster flash hit the bridge railing right next to Max's hand as he vaulted over, landing on a gravel embankment next to the train tracks and sliding further down. He could hear Angel climbing down somewhere nearby.

"Captain, are you hurt?" Angel took Max's arm to help him up, but didn't let go until Max gently dislodged their hand.

"I'm fine," Max said, trying to brush his jacket off, not that he could see any dirt on it in the dim light. His hat was well and truly gone; it must have fallen off when they first jumped off the upper walkway. "No idea where we are, though..." He fished a flashlight from his coat pocket, flicked the switch, then tapped it against his palm until it finally turned on. "Camille? Camille are you...Camille?" He turned to pan the flashlight all around the grimy brick vault they were in. "Damn...I was sure he was right next to us."

Max reached to pick up his pack, but Angel got to it before he could. "Camille jumped over the other side of the bridge," Angel said. "He must still be on that level."

"You might have told me."

Angel looked as if Max had slapped them. "I thought the main priority should be your safety, Captain."

*As does everyone else, apparently,* Max thought a bit sulkily, even though he knew he ought to be grateful. "Well. That's fine, I guess." He smiled reassuringly at Angel, who flashed a tiny, tentative smile back before their face returned to its static default. "He's probably already heading back to the Liberte. I should let him know we're okay..." He pulled his sleeve back to turn on his communicator, only to see that the display panel was cracked and flashing error signals. "...or not. We can't be that far away, though. It's just a matter of getting back to the upper level. Come on, let's look for a lift."

* * *

"Camille?" Georges looked behind him, then frowned. "Where's Max?"

"We got separated in the market; I couldn't raise his communicator. I thought he and Angel might head back here looking for me, but..."

"Of course he never does the sensible thing," Georges sighed, rubbing his temples. "Maybe the Liberte's comm will have better luck getting a connection, but the network is never any good here." Unsurprisingly, a haven of intergalactic criminals was not exactly the most conducive place for tracking anyone down.

"Marie-Anne!" he said, leaning in through the doorway of the pilot's cabin, where Marie-Anne was cleaning her blaster. "Marie-Anne!" he repeated, waiting until she pulled out one earbud. "Max is missing again. Can you pick him up?"

"One of these days I'm going to have to chain him down," Marie-Anne muttered, pulling a memory stick out of her hair and inserting it in the Liberte's scanning system. "What's the point in leaving him alone all this time if somebody else just...oh, that might be him," she broke off, pointing at a faintly flashing light. "He's not far away, but it looks like he's a couple levels down. We'd better find him before anyone else does."

* * *

"There should be a lift a couple blocks ahead," Max said, waving his flashlight at a faintly glowing sign. "We'll be back at the Liberte in no--ah!"

Max dropped the flashlight as someone grabbed his arm and yanked him into a pitch-black alleyway. He started to jerk away, then froze as he felt a knife against his throat.

A lantern switched on, and Max winced at the sudden blinding light. There were two other men flanking the person holding him, both armed with blasters. Angel was still standing at the entrance to the alleyway, head tilted to one side. "Captain?"

"Throw us the pack full of fuel cells, pretty boy, if you don't want your boyfriend to get his throat slit!" the man holding Max ordered.

"Just do what they want, Angel," Max said. He had no idea what Angel might do, and this was really not the time to risk escalating the situation.

Angel's brows arched slightly. "'Boyfriend' is not in my internal dictionary."

"That was really not the most vital part of that sentence, I think--"

"Hurry it up!"

Max winced as the knife pressed closer; was it drawing blood?

"As you order," Angel said calmly, sliding the pack off their shoulder. Then they flung it far past the cluster of thieves as their eyes shifted into red. "Assault protocols activated."

"What th--"

Max stumbled forward as the man holding him let go and the knife fell away. There was something wet in his hair. The other two men were screaming. He couldn't tell where Angel was. Max's foot hit something as he stepped into the pool of light from the dropped lantern. He looked down and staggered, stomach lurching. A severed head was oozing blood onto his boot.

Max jumped back, slipped in one of the pools of blood, and landed sprawling in the main vaultway. He could see dim lights from the direction of the lift, and thought he could hear familiar voices. "Georges?" he called. "Marie-Anne?"

"Max!" The lights started moving towards him more quickly.

"I got the pack back, Captain!" Angel called from the entrance of the alleyway. Their perfect cheekbones were splattered with blood but they were beaming with delight, their eyes glowing red. "Captain? Captain, are you alright?"

Max picked himself up, tried to take a breath, then tried again. "I'm...fine. I'm going to faint now, I think."

"Captain?" Angel's eyes fading back to teal as he moved to catch him was the last thing Max saw as everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'hey i guess it's time to write a simple action scene' ::constructs multilevel outlaw planet as setting:: 'oops'


	14. Chapter 14

Max rolled over in bed. A few moments later he realized that he probably shouldn't be there, since the last thing he remembered was passing out in one of the dirty alleys of the Caravanserai. "What...?"

"Captain?" Max looked up to see Angel standing next to the bed, still spattered with blood. There was blood smeared all over Max's sheets as well. That was a shame - it wasn't every day you stole a shipment of linens from a luxury hotel planet.

"Hey, Angel. How'd we get back here?"

"Max?"

Georges and Marie-Anne were standing in the doorway, looking worried. Usually when something happened Max ended up mobbed with concern right away. He didn't exactly mind having some space, but this was an odd time for them to change their habits.

"Max?" Georges sounded surprisingly subdued, considering the situation. Most times when Max got into some dangerous scrape he started in on the yelling right away. The nervous, deferential voice he was using sounded wrong somehow. "Can you tell your friend to stand down, maybe?"

Marie-Anne was standing a little behind Georges, a hand hovering over her blaster but not touching it.

"Huh? Hey! Angel! Don't do that!"

Angel withdrew the blade locked into one wrist and released the energy that had been swirling around his other hand. "But Captain, my defense protocols..."

"Not now, for heaven's sake, Angel! They're my friends, they're fine!"

"But..." Angel scowled at Marie-Anne, who glared back.

"Tell it Camille needs to examine you," she snapped.

"Uh...yeah, what she said, Angel. What happened?"

"As far as we could tell," Georges said, "since you were unconscious and your _pet_ won't talk to anyone else, it dismembered three people after they tried to mug you, then carried you back to the ship covered in blood and wouldn't let any of us get near you."

"Angel...you can't just..."

Angel did not look contrite at all, but they did relax slightly, sitting down in the chair next to Max's bed.

"Camille!" Marie-Anne called into the lounge. "Max is awake!"

Camille slipped between Marie-Anne and Georges, carrying the first aid kit. He made his way cautiously across the room, keeping the bed between himself and Angel.

Max caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror as he watched Camille, and quickly understood why the others looked so concerned. There was congealed blood covering half his hair and face, as well as soaked into his sleeve. His vision started to gray out again for a moment. "That's not...mine, is it?"

"That's what we've been trying to figure out for the past half hour, but since you didn't bleed out before your robot friend would let us touch you, I'm guessing it's probably not."

Max kept his eyes away from the mirror anyway as Camille poked at him and tried to wipe away the worst of the blood with a wet cloth. He had never been good with blood, even back at home when Bernard had tried once or twice to teach him swordfighting...the one time he had actually gotten through Bernard's defenses and cut him he had ended up being the one fainting, and they had all laughed at him after that. It was hard to believe it had been more than a year since he had seen them now.

"Congratulations, it's just a scratch," Camille said finally, applying a plaster over the shallow cut in Max's neck that had been revealed once the rest of the blood was wiped away. "Nothing to faint over."

"Captain!"

Camille jumped back as Angel moved. Max also leaned back slightly as Angel sat on the bed next to him, his face entirely too close. "I'm fine, Angel. No need to worry, see?"

"Once you talk your deathbot into calming down a bit, come see me," Georges said. "We need to talk."

Georges kept a close eye on Angel as Camille edged out of the room, then let the door hiss shut. If it wasn't an automatic sliding door, he would definitely have slammed it.

_Merde. I've really done it now._


	15. Chapter 15

"Oskar. Oskar, look at this!" Wolfgang grabbed Oscar's sleeve, holding out the tablet he had been looking at.

"What's this?" Oskar looked at the blurry footage playing on the screen.

"It's gun camera footage from one of the ships in that slaver fleet we wiped out yesterday. Look." He tapped the screen, zooming in and pausing. "Someone we know."

"What the..." Oskar snatched the tablet away so he could get a closer look, then looked over at the wall of the stateroom that was covered in plans, photographs, and stills from the few seconds of the Sinbad IV transmission. "That's definitely HAD 57-JU3T. But..." he looked at the man holding the robot's hand as they ran. He was wearing a hat, but it was certainly the same person as in the Sinbad IV footage. "It didn't kill them?"

"Its programming must be pretty messed up after sitting for so long. Maybe it thinks it's supposed to be protecting them?"

" _That's_ definitely not going to make our job easier at all. Where was this, anyway?"

"The black boxes we picked up said the last place they landed was the Caravanserai. Should we go have a look?"

"His Excellency told us not to do anything that would stand out. But it couldnt hurt to go wait nearby and see if they turn up." The Empire usually avoided military action near the Caravanserai. Not only was it located well into the no-man's-land between the Alliance and the Empire, but it was also much more useful as a place for spies to gather information. Many of the smugglers and other criminals who traded goods there were well aware of this fact, and would happily trade intel as well. A rash move on their part now could shut off that source permanently.

"Maybe I can pick up a present for my wife while we're there," Wolfgang laughed. "I'm running out of good stuff in the contraband warehouses..."

"We are not going shopping."

"It'd only take a few hours..."

"No!"


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chronologically this chapter happens just before the previous one with the Imperials (by a matter of hours, basically), but is after it because I liked the flow better that way.

"Georges?"

Georges looked up as Max knocked lightly on the open doorway of the kitchen. "There you are."

Max smiled nervously as he walked over to the kitchen table and sat down across from Georges. He had mostly cleaned up the rest of the blood--his hair was still damp and tousled--and changed into a loose white shirt and black trousers.

Georges tried not to dwell on any of this, as he couldn't afford to be distracted from the important thing right now. "Took you long enough," he said curtly, taking another drink of the Selenian vodka he'd been working on since Max came too.

"Sorry..." Max reached for the second bottle, then pouted when Georges snatched it away.

"Oh no, I have enough to deal with right now as it is," Georges said firmly.

"I'm not that much of a lightweight," Max protested.

"Last time you spent two hours talking about how pretty Marie-Anne's hair is. And don't try to distract me." Max didn't remember any of what had happened afterwards, or the things he had said to Georges, but Georges would never forget.

Max sighed, looked down awkwardly, fussed with the loose cuff of his shirt.

"Where's the robot now?" Georges asked.

"Angel's in my room. You ought to use their name, you know."

"I'll be sure to remember that after it kills us all in our sleep." Georges took another drink, then set the bottle down heavily. Max jumped a little at the noise. _He's still scared of me after a year, but he runs right into the arms of that thing?_  "Did you know it could do that before what happened today?"

"...um."

"Max. How long have you known it could do that."

"...Um...since a few days after we picked them up?"

Georges groaned and took another drink. "And you didn't tell anyone?"

"Camille knew..."

"And he didn't tell me!?"

"I asked him not to. So you wouldn't overreact." Max met Georges' eyes stubbornly.

This was going to require something stronger than Selenian vodka. "Max, this is by no means an overreaction. I am in fact reacting in an extremely calm and measured manner to this situation. Your pet is _made to kill things_ , what did you think would happen!?"

"It's not their fault..."

"Maybe not, but that doesn't change anything about what it is, or what it did this afternoon. Max...Max, I know you're fond of it, but we can't keep it."

"We can't just kill Angel! They saved my life!" Max half-stood, shouting across the table. "Georges, you can't--"

"Ssh! Calm down, what if it heard you? I'm not talking about killing it. God, I don't even know how we would at this point. Now sit down and listen for a minute."

"I owe Angel my life," Max repeated as he sat down.

"Well, if that's where this conversation is going, you also owe me your life, _and_  Marie-Anne, and it's definitely going to kill us first if it panics, so we're at a bit of a draw there." Georges hadn't intended to hit at Max's weak points like this, and it hurt to see him flinch and look away. "I'm sorry, but it's not safe to have it on the ship."

"They haven't done anything..." Max protested softly.

"What if you were actually hurt when those thieves jumped you, and not just scratched? You would have died while the rest of us were standing right there, unable to do anything, and then it would have lost it and killed the rest of us!" Georges had been preparing for that exact scenario, and unable to see any way out of it, when Max had finally regained consciousness. "Listen, Marie-Anne and I talked it over, and we have a plan. It's not a great plan, but at least it gets us and the Liberte out of danger." Max seemed to have given up on arguing, so Georges went on. "We're only staying at the Caravanserai for another couple of days, until Madame Roland calms down. When we're ready to leave, you'll send it outside for some errand and we'll just...go."

Max looked horrified. Georges couldn't deny that it was a cruel thing to do, but it wasn't as if they had any other options. "But then what will happen to everyone on the Caravanserai?"

Georges shrugged. "If you aren't around to 'protect' any more, it might not do anything. And if it does, the Caravanserai is full of murderers and pirates, so it's not as if they don't have it coming. Nobody lives here permanently, either, they all should have their own escape plans."

"Isn't there anything else we can do?" Max pleaded.

Georges had always been weak to those eyes. "No," he said sharply, staring into his cup of vodka. "I'll tell you when we're ready to leave. Don't let it figure out what we're planning."


	17. Chapter 17

_**Two days later:** _

"Captain! You're awake!"

Max sighed and rolled over. "Good morning, Angel." The robot had spent most of the last couple days in Max's room, and while they had spent the previous two nights hibernating, or dormant, or whatever passed as sleep for them, they had always reacted instantly when Max woke up.

"I'll get you some clothes."

"No, Angel, that's fine. I can do it myself." Max had let Angel pick his clothes yesterday, just to keep them happy, but he knew better now. He hadn't even known he owned a leopard-print shirt before Angel found it.

Angel looked disappointed, but didn't protest. "Is there anything else I can do for you, Captain?"

"No, I'm alright. Listen, why don't you call me Max, okay?"

"But..."

"All my friends call me Max."

Angel's teal eyes went wide, and Max could hear a fan start whirring as their circuits went into a higher gear. "I...but..."

"We're friends, aren't we?" Max said over his shoulder as he opened his closet. Angel looked as if they might faint, if they were only capable of such a thing.

"Yes...Max...?"

Max smiled at him as he pulled on a jacket. "There, that wasn't so hard, was--" He broke of as someone knocked on the door. "What is it?"

"Georges wants to talk to you, Max," Marie-Anne said through the door. There was an edge to her tone and Max could immediately guess what it was that Georges wanted to talk about.

Max glanced back at Angel. Georges and Marie-Anne had come up with this idea for his own good, he knew, but it was still an awful thing to do to Angel--they couldn't help their nature, after all. He felt guilty for going along with it, but he was afraid that if he didn't, Georges would come up with something worse. At least this left Angel alive.

"Ca...Max?" Angel was looking at him curiously, with their head tilted to one side.

Max smiled at him again, but it was harder this time. "I'll just be a minute, Angel."

Georges and Marie-Anne were in the helm. Camille was in the kitchen baking something, and called out to Max happily. He was the only one on the _Liberte_ besides Angel who didn't know about the plan; Max had thought about talking to him about it, but he would probably just take Georges' and Marie-Anne's side anyway. Camille was kind, but he was also practical.

"Do we have to?" Max said as the door of the helm opened.

"Yes, we have to. We've been over this, Max," Marie-Anne said firmly.

"Fine. What do you want me to do?"

"You'll go ask it to help you get the tarps and netting off of the _Liberte_. Marie-Anne will beep you on your comm as soon as enough is away for us to take off. Then you just have to get inside before it does, and we're through with it."

Max nodded, staring at the rusty metal floor. He felt sick thinking about abandoning Angel, after the conversation they had only just had. "Alright. I'll do it."

"Max! Do you want pancakes?" Camille called as Max headed back to his quarters.

"I'm not hungry," Max snapped.

"Max!" Angel ran over to grab onto Max's sleeve as he entered his room.

Max tugged his arm away. He couldn't make himself meet Angel's eyes.

"Is something wrong, Max?" Angel leaned forward so they could look up at him, blinking curiously.

"Uh...no. Everything's fine." Max produced a smile, after some effort. "There was something you could help me with, actually."

Angel beamed. "Anything!"


	18. Chapter 18

Max leaned down to tug at one of the stakes pinning down the camouflage netting over the _Liberte_.

"Can I help you, Max?" Angel said behind him.

Max jumped. _This plan Georges thought up would work much better if they didn't keep hovering around me..._ "Ah...no, I'm fine, Angel. You go get the other side, okay?"

Georges was standing on the landing steps of the _Liberte_ , leaning against the open doorway. Clearly he didn't trust Max to actually go through with this without supervision, and he wasn't exactly wrong. Max looked over at him beseechingly, but Georges deliberately looked away.

The netting came free as Max pulled the last stage loose, and Angel ran over from the other side of the ship to help gather it up. Georges looked more alert now, but still made no sign as Max walked over to pass him the bundled-up netting.

"Georges..."

Georges didn't reply, and only nudged him back out into the courtyard. Underneath the netting, most of the tarps were just tossed over the ship, with a few cords run across to keep them from flying away. Max sighed and started pulling the stakes on his side loose, while Angel obligingly went to work on the far side again.

Max was just reaching for the last stake when he felt the gentle buzz from his wrist comm. _Already?_ he thought miserably, looking under the ship to where Angel was standing.

"Max!" Georges hissed, gesturing at him to hurry. Max could hear the rattle of the _Liberte's_ engines starting up.

Georges headed inside the ship as Max reached the landing stairs. He had barely finished climbing up to the entrance when the _Liberte_ rose abruptly off the ground. There was a startled cry from Angel as the last cords snapped.

"Max!" Angel came running around the side of the ship. The _Liberte_ was about six feet off the ground now, close enough that Angel could still reach the steps easily if he jumped. "Max, what..."

"Angel, no!" Max shouted over the engine noise as Angel started to reach for the bottom of the steps.

Angel froze, eyes wide as they looked up at the ship. "Max?"

"Angel I...I'm sorry!"

The last thing Max saw as the door closed was Angel falling to their knees in the dirt.


	19. Chapter 19

Camille came out of the kitchen just as Max stumbled into the lounge. "What just happened?" he demanded. "What the hell kind of take-off was that? You nearly broke everything in my kitchen!"

"We just ditched the robot on the Caravanserai," Georges said, pouring out a glass of the Selenian vodka and shoving it in Max's direction. Max took it silently and sat there staring at it. His vision was starting to blur and he blinked quickly, not wanting Georges to notice.

"What? Why would--" Camille began.

"Because otherwise it was going to kill us all eventually!" Georges shouted. "It was only pure luck that it didn't already!"

"And you're okay with that, Max?"

"We didn't have any other options," Georges said.

"I wasn't asking you!"

Max took a drink of the vodka, letting Camille and Georges' argument blur around him. Angel had looked so heartbroken, kneeling there looking up at the departing _Liberte_...after all, from their point of view, they had only just been revived after centuries of abandonment, and then promptly abandoned again after hardly more than two weeks.

And then Max had of course had to go and make it even worse by convincing them they were friends. He wished he had never had that conversation. As happy as it had made Angel in the moment, it had only made it all the crueler when he betrayed them mere hours later.

Even despite all of that, Max was probably indeed the closest thing Angel had ever had to a friend, compared to their Imperial handlers. But that didn't make what he had done any better.

Max jumped as he suddenly felt a light hand on his shoulder. "Marie-Anne?"

Marie-Anne gently confiscated the glass of vodka and drank it down herself. "I know that was hard for you," she said, sitting down next to him.

"They trusted me!" Max burst out. "They trusted me and I...I...I just...left."

"I know." Marie-Anne took his hand in hers. Her hands were so small and delicate, with their tiny little pink nails, but he knew how dangerous they were very well. "I know it hurts. But it hurts because you're a good person, Max."

Max turned to look down at her curiously. "What?"

"I've done terrible things, Max, you know that. I've done much worse things than you just have and I...I didn't feel anything afterwards. Anything at all. You're a much better person than I am, Max."

Max lifted her hand to put it against his face. "And would it hurt if you had to..." He couldn't make himself finish, but they both knew what he meant.

"I...I hope so." Marie-Anne tilted her face up, and Max leaned down to meet her.

"Sorry to interrupt..."

Max sighed as Marie-Anne quickly disentangled herself and stood up. "What is it, Georges," he demanded, glaring at him indignantly.

"So we just got a warning notif from the Thieve's Guild..."

"Is it important?" The Thieve's Guild was a loosely moderated message board for those on the wrong side of the authorities of the two major powers, and mainly served to give out alerts when there was some kind of activity from either the Imperial or Alliance military.

"Well." Georges coughed. "So. Funny thing. An Imperial cruiser just sent a landing party down to the Caravanserai."

Max blinked. " _WHAT!?_ "


	20. Chapter 20

"Well, here we are!" Wulfgang wrinkled his nose delicately. "The smelliest planet in the galaxy, apparently. Ugh. Where's the market?"

"We are not here to shop," Oskar repeated for what felt like the twentieth time in the last hour. "And will you stop taking pictures of yourself?"

"The lighting's good here. The smog and the sunset are very nice."

Oskar sighed, looking down at the tablet they had brought. "If it's still on the planet, we should be able to pick up readings from it if it's within a few time zones of us. It has a unique internal network...what do you know! There it is."

Wulfgang looked over his shoulder. "Well, it's pretty close by, and it doesn't look like it's going anywhere. We can do some shopping and then pick it up, right?" He tugged on Oskar's sleeve insistently.

 _God, I feel like I'm babysitting._  "No! Come on, this way."

* * *

For a long moment, Georges, Max, and Marie-Anne just stared at each other, frozen.

"We're turning this ship around right now!" Max shouted finally.

"Yeah..." Georges said quietly.

"We can't just let the Empire have them! They'd make them destroy half the galaxy!"

"Yeah..."

"I'm the captain, and I say we're going right back to get them!"

"Max! For heaven's sake, I'm agreeing with you, so let's get a move on!"

* * *

"It should be right through here." Oskar pointed at a narrow, dingy alleyway. "Keep quiet. We don't want to startle it."

Oskar kept his hand on his blaster as he stepped slowly through the alley, with Wulfgang close behind him.

The alley opened onto an equally dirty courtyard. Judging by the booster burns on the crumbling brick walls, a ship had been parked there until a few hours before, at most.

At first, Oskar thought the courtyard was entirely empty. Then he noticed the figure lying on a heap of tarps on the far side of the courtyard. Oskar glanced down at the tablet to confirm his suspicions, then tapped Wulfgang on the shoulder. "There it is," he whispered.

* * *

"We're...turning around?" Camille leaned through the door of the helm, watching as Georges and Max tried to get some more speed out of the _Liberte_.

"The Imperials are going to pick up the robot if we don't get to it first," Georges muttered.

"I can't believe you didn't think of that before you made me go through with your plan!" Max exclaimed.

"This isn't the time to argue about it!" Marie-Anne declared.

"Yes." "Okay."

"And what are we supposed to do if the Imperials do get to them first?" Camille asked.

"I'm working on it," Georges said. "Marie-Anne, you take my controls, I'm going to go see if venting the hyperdrive will get us going any faster."

* * *

Oskar took a step forward, then froze as the robot slowly sat up and looked at them. _Proximity alert? Or was it fully conscious the whole time?_  He studied it as he considered how to approach it.

HAD 57-JU3T didn't look much the worse for wear from its little adventure with the band of pirates; it was a bit dirty, and had a few singes on its hands from the acid rain shower that had hit just before the cruiser landed, but otherwise it looked undamaged and fully functional. It was just as pretty as the photographs, as well.

The robot blinked its large teal eyes slowly, tilting its head to one side. Oskar started to take another step forward, but Wulfgang grabbed his arm to pull him back. "What?" Oskar hissed.

"It's got like...feelings and shit from its messed up programming, right? Let me try something, I'm good with all that junk."

"Is that what you tell all the girls?"

"Oh yes, and they love me for it. Most of the boys, too."


	21. Chapter 21

"Marie-Anne, can you track it down?" Georges asked as the _Liberte_ dropped into the Caravanserai's smoggy atmosphere again, a few zones away from where they had taken off earlier in the day.

Marie-Anne shrugged, poking at the scanner screen. "As long as we're close enough, it should stand out...ah. There it is. Right where we left it."

Max leaned over Marie's shoulder. "So at least the Imperials haven't found them yet?" he said hopefully, but he couldn't help wondering with a twinge of guilt how long Angel would have waited there if they hadn't been forced to turn back.

"Maybe," Georges said. "But we shouldn't get too close...there was an abandoned warehouse a few blocks away, we can set the _Liberte_ down there and walk in. The Imperial cruiser can't get below orbit without crashing into the planet, and that should keep us out of the view of the landing party." He sighed as he guided the _Liberte_ downward. "If we go down there to rescue it and it snaps and kills us all I'm going to be very disappointed, Max."

"It was your idea to leave them in the first place," Max reminded him. "It's your own fault if that makes them more unstable."

"Whatever, just get going," Marie-Anne snapped as the _Liberte_ settled onto the metal roof of the warehouse--it groaned and shuddered but held up under the weight of the small ship. "I'll stay with the ship so we can make a quick getaway."

* * *

Oskar watched nervously as Wulfgang slowly approached the robot. It hadn't moved yet, but from the old recordings Oberstein had shown of it he knew that despite its innocent-looking face it could turn extremely violent with little to no warning.

Once he was a couple meters away from the robot, Wulfgang crouched down so that he was on eye level with it. "Hey," he said quietly.

The robot blinked, but remained silent.

"What are you doing here?"

"...I..." It glanced upwards, then shrugged.

"Did your new friends leave you here?"

Oskar winced, sure that taking the conversation this direction would end badly--the last thing they needed was to trigger a killer robot's emotional weak points.

After a long pause, the robot nodded silently, and Wulfgang moved a step closer. "That wasn't very nice of them, now was it? Look at you now, you don't have anywhere to go."

"...waiting. For him to come back."

"But they're not going to come back, are they? Why would they have left you then, hm?"

"But...oh." The robot's eyes went very wide.

"There, you see?" Wulfgang said, taking another step towards it. "Why don't you come with us, and then you'll never have to think about them again."

Oskar tensed and reached for his blaster as Wulfgang held a hand out to the robot. For several long breaths neither of them moved. Then the robot reached out slowly to take Wulfgang's hand.

"There, that wasn't so hard, was it?" Wulfgang smiled and stood up, pulling the robot up with him, then gently smoothed its bangs out of its face. "Come on, let's go."


	22. Chapter 22

"Max, wait up!" Georges called as he followed Max through the tangle of alleys towards their destination. Max ignored him.

"Max! Do you even know where you're going?"

Max thought about this for a moment, then paused and waited for Georges to catch up.

"That's better. Come on, this way."

"I'm still the captain, you know," Max muttered as he followed Georges' more measured pace through the alleys.

"Wait!" Georges held out an arm to stop Max as they reached an alley that would open on the courtyard where they had left Angel.

"What!?"

"We don't know what--Max! Not again!" Georges exclaimed as Max ducked under his arm and ran into the courtyard.

Max skidded to a halt as he registered the scene in the courtyard. Angel was there, true, but they were flanked by two other humans wearing Imperial uniforms. One, blond and slightly shorter than the other, was holding Angel's hand, leading them towards another alleyway. The other had spun to face Max as soon as he entered the courtyard. He had odd eyes--one blue, one brown--making his gaze seem all the more intense as he slowly lowered one hand towards his blaster.

Angel didn't seem to have noticed Max and Georges yet, and the blond imperial, after a quick glance in their direction, began tugging them more quickly out of the courtyard.

"Angel, wait!" Max shouted.

Angel paused, then turned around slowly, pulling their hands out of the Imperial's grip. "Max? ...Max!"

"Hey! Oh sh--"

Angel casually tossed the blond Imperial aside as he tried to grab their sleeve. Georges drew in a sharp breath as the Imperial hit the brick wall on the opposite side of the courtyard with a dull crunch, but Angel barely seemed to notice or care as he sprinted towards Georges and Max.

"You came back!"

Max yelped as Angel pounced and hugged him hard enough to tumble them both onto the dusty pavement. "Hi, Angel. I'm sorry I left you," he said, managing to free one hand so that he could pat Angel's hair gently. "Now can you let go please so I can breathe," he gasped as Angel's hug tightened a little too much.

"...Sorry."

* * *

Oskar had been prepared for things to go south when Wulfgang had first insisted on approaching the robot, but he hadn't been prepared for the situation to change so rapidly. Nor had he at all expected the pirates to come racing back for their abandoned treasure.

While the robot was distracted with the two pirates, Oskar raced over to where Wulfgang was lying on the dirty cobblestones. His foot hit Wulfgang's comm--it must have fallen out of his pocket when he hit the wall. The screen was cracked and glitching. Oskar kicked it out of the way, then froze when the robot turned to look his direction.

Oskar backed slowly towards where Wulfgang was lying as the robot released its friend and stood up. He had one hand on his blaster, but he had no idea if it would have any effect against the robot besides goading it into violence. For now, it seemed content to observe, at least for a few moments longer, so he knelt next to Wulfgang and felt for a pulse.

There was blood in Wulfgang's hair and smeared down his face, but his fingers moved slightly as Oskar took his wrist, and he could feel his pulse going. While a relief, this compounded matters further. Oskar couldn't abandon his friend while he was still alive, but he also couldn't see how he was going to get them both away from the killer robot that was now most likely very angry with them.

The robot took a step forward and Oskar drew his blaster, but his first shot went just too wide, ripping away a lock of its chestnut brown hair. Before he could get a second shot off the robot had closed the distance between them, knocking the blaster away and putting a hand around his throat.


	23. Chapter 23

"Angel!" Max exclaimed, scrambling to his feet.

"Max, stay out of the way!" Georges said, grabbing Max and pulling him back.

"Let go! Angel, don't do that!"

Angel turned slightly to glance back in their direction. "My protocols dictate that--"

"Oh, screw your protocols!"

Angel raised an eyebrow. "That word is not in--"

"Look, just put him down, alright?"

Angel frowned slightly, then shrugged and let go of the Imperial, letting him fall sprawling on the pavement. Max quickly stepped in front of him--not only might Angel change their mind any moment, but Georges might get ideas as well.

"Max, we're not letting them live, are we?"

"It's against protocols," Angel agreed.

"We can't just kill them!" Max protested.

"Listen, Max, I know you're having fun with your morals and all, but if it's a choice between a little bit of murder and a lot of being tortured to death by Imperials, please let's just do the murder."

* * *

Oskar stayed down and tried to be as little noticed as possible as the two pirates and the robot argued. He couldn't see how they were managing to keep it under control--they looked like perfectly ordinary humans, even if one of them was a wanted pirate.

"Max..." Danton sighed, lowering his blaster.

Wulfgang was starting to move, but his eyes were still closed. The movement attracted the robot's attention again, but the smaller pirate--Max, Danton had called him, so at least that was some information gained from this--pushed it back. There was no way that Max was actually strong enough to use force on the robot, so it must be letting him push it around.

"Angel, no!" Max snapped, in a tone more appropriate to use with a misbehaving small dog than a lethal war machine.

The pirates had even named it, then. So why leave it behind, and then why change their minds so quickly?

"Come on, let's just go back to the ship, okay? We're all fine, no reason to hurt anybody, come on." Max took the robot's arm and began pulling it towards the alley he and Danton had come from, grabbing a fistful of Danton's jacket as he passed.

"Max, for...alright, fine," Danton muttered as Max tugged at him. "You don't know how lucky you are," he snapped at Oskar as he let Max pull him into the alley.

* * *

"Angel, what did they do to make you go with them?" Max asked as they walked back towards the _Liberte_. He had no idea what threats they could have used, or weaknesses they could have exploited, for Angel to seem to be following them so willingly.

Angel glanced over at him briefly, then looked away, tilting his head so his bangs hid his face somewhat. "They didn't do anything."

"What? But...they would have reprogrammed you, wouldn't they? Why would you--"

"I didn't think you were going to come back," Angel replied quickly, blurring the words together so that it took Max a few moments to realize what he had said. "It won't happen again."


	24. Chapter 24

Once they returned to the ship, Georges had withdrawn to the engine room again, claiming it was to reassemble the hyperdrive into something closer to proper order, as it wasn't supposed to have been doing any of the things he had made it do in order to reach the Caravanserai in time. Actually, it was more because he didn't want to deal with having to face Max after he had been proven right, and with a side of not wanting to see Angel clinging on to Max now that it was back.

He couldn't shake the noise from when the Imperial had hit the wall from his head--and the Angel clearly hadn't even been trying to injure him, just push him out of the way.

After three hours of tinkering and eating all the cookies Camille had made that everyone else had forgotten about, he was almost starting to feel better.

Another hour later, he glanced up from re-assembling one of the filters as he felt the slight hitch in the Liberte's flight that he knew meant it had shifted over into autopilot.

"Could everyone come to the lounge, please?" Max said over the intercom. Georges could faintly hear Marie-Anne whispering something in the background. "What, do I have to...? Er...alright. This is your captain speaking. There, I did it, see..."

Georges sighed. _Is he going to try to make us all 'make friends' with his pet weapon now? Just because we're stuck with it now doesn't change what it is._

When he came into the lounge he saw Max and the Angel standing on one side of the room, with Camille and Marie-Anne sitting warily on the opposite couches. Max was smiling hopefully but the Angel's face was still as flat as ever.

"So...I thought since Angel is going to be joining us permanently that we should all actually be introduced properly," Max explained, pulling his arm out of the Angel's grip and pushing it forward a little.

Georges thought about pointing out that Angel obviously didn't care in the slightest who else was on board as long as Max was there, but decided against it. It would probably be a bad idea to put the notion in the robot's head that the rest of the _Liberte_ 's crew was expendable.

"So. I'm Max, I'm the captain, but you know that I guess." The Angel nodded, its eyes not leaving Max's face as he continued speaking. "And this is Georges, he keeps the _Liberte_ running properly. Marie-Anne is my co-pilot, and Camille is our doctor and navigator. And he cooks for us, and it's delicious, usually. We don't talk about the time with the pickled herring."

Camille made a small wave when Max mentioned his name, but Georges and Marie-Anne didn't move as Max prattled on.

"Anyway. Say hello, Angel," Max prompted, giving the robot a small nudge.

The Angel suddenly put on a dazzling fake smile--not that any of its facial expressions had ever looked real. But this looked like a beautiful facade to tempt in prey. "Hello," it said sweetly. Its eyes shifted to match the smile in a way that looked human enough, but behind that was the same flat gaze.

A horrifying thought abruptly jumped into Georges' mind. Had this whole thing been a long con from the Empire the whole time? Had they been waiting for some group of idiots to be lured in looking for scrap, pick the thing up and carry it into Alliance space to unleash hell, none the wiser?

"There, that wasn't so hard, was it?" Max was saying.

 _I've got to do something about this,_ Georges thought. Max might have completely taken leave of his senses for this robot, but at least Georges could make sure it wasn't able to hurt him.

* * *

**The next day, aboard Imperial Starcruiser _Rienzi_**

"Ow..."

"Oh, you're awake." Oskar lowered his tablet, spinning his chair to face the bed Wulfgang was lying in.

"That could have gone better," Wulfgang tried to joke, but it came out weakly as the pain in his head flared up again.

"Oh, I don't know," Oskar said, keeping his tone light. "I did get a whole day of peace and quiet out of it."

This got a small laugh, to Oskar's relief.

Wulfgang picked at a loose thread in his blanket for a moment. "Did you call my wife?" he asked finally.

Oskar should his head. "I was thinking about it," he admitted. "But I decided to wait another day..."

"Probably for the best," Wulfgang replied. "Every time something happens she starts off again about asking for a transfer to a desk job." He reached for the side table to grab his comm, an instinctive movement that Oskar had seen hundreds of times, then fumbled for a few moments, an increasingly distressed look appearing on his face until he finally looked over to confirm what he was not feeling. "Damn it! My comm!"

Oskar thought back to the Caravanserai just as everything had started going wrong. "It must have fallen out of your pocket when you hit the wall. I think I saw one of the pirates kick it out of the way."

"Damn it, not again," Wulfgang grumbled. "At least it's still under warranty this time...Let me borrow that tablet, will you? I have to use the tracking to prove it's lost or they'll never give me a new one."

"Sure." Oskar handed the tablet over, then stepped into the corridor to get a mug of coffee. He leaned back into the room when he heard a sharp gasp from Wulfgang. "Are you okay?"

"Found my comm!"

"Where is it, a junkyard in the Caravanserai?" Oskar sat back down next to the bed and set another mug of coffee down on the end table for Wulfgang. "You are not turning this starcruiser around just so you can pick up your gadget."

Wulfgang shook his head, grinning. "It's in the Iskandar Starfield. They must have picked it up."


	25. Chapter 25

**Aboard the _Liberte_**

George cautiously pressed the power button of the shattered comm he had scooped up off the ground as they were fleeing the Caravanserai with the Angel. He had been planning to tell Max about it as soon as they were back on the ship, but now he thought it was a better idea to try to see if he could get any more information on how the Angel worked without Max or Angel finding out about it.

It wasn't that he didn't trust Max, not exactly. But Max was far too trusting, and if he knew anything about this he would surely let it slip to the robot. There was no way that would end well.

The comm's screen was completely non-functional, but the projector display he had it hooked up to mirrored it virtually as his brute-force program set to work on the passcode. Luckily it wasn't biolocked—Imperial military regulations usually required that, but this was a personal device, judging by the wallpaper, which was a heavily decorated self-portrait photo of the blond Imperial officer they had encountered on the Caravanserai and a smiling brown-haired young woman. His wife, Georges assumed, since she had a ring. Or his widow now, most likely, thanks to the Angel. Well, he wasn't about to cry over one less Imperial in any case.

Georges turned the projector off, set the comm and the brute-force device in a drawer of his tool cabinet, and locked it; it would take a few hours at least for the password to be cracked. None of the others usually ventured into the engine room—it was Georges' territory, like the kitchen was Camille's and the cockpit generally belonged to Max and Marie-Anne—but there was always the chance someone would need a wrench or something, and he didn't trust the Angel not to poke around either. He definitely didn't want it or Max to find out that he was looking for a weakness in the robot.

"Max?" he called as the engine room door slid shut behind him.

"In here!" Max called from the kitchen.

Georges stepped into the _Liberte_ 's small but incongruously cheerful kitchen, then paused as he saw the Angel sitting on the counter. Camille was stirring a bowl of something, and Max was leaning back against the counter, smiling at some remark of Camille's that Georges had missed.

"Georges!" Max turned to look at him, still smiling. "What's up?"

God, but Georges loved Max's smile. Max smiled at him only rarely, but whenever he did, Georges felt he could die for him. Or kill for him—whatever Max might ask.

"We need to replace some of the stuff that broke when we took off from the Caravanserai, uh. The first time. And then on the way back." He hadn't planned on discussing this with the Angel present, but it looked more interested in what Camille was doing at the moment.

Camille looked up at the Angel. "What, do you want some?"

The Angel looked at Camille blankly as he held the spoon out, then delicately swiped at the batter with a finger. It looked at it doubtfully, rubbing thumb and finger together. "What is this for."

"You eat it," Camille said gently. "It tastes good, try it."

The Angel licked at the batter, a startlingly human movement. Then it looked back at Camille with a small shrug.

"What, you can't taste it?" Camille said, looking scandalized.

"My sensors are not equipped for this," the Angel replied.

"Oh..."

Camille persisted in feeling sorry for the thing, the same as everyone else. Georges had to admit it had been cruel of the Imperials to create something so close to human and then cut it off from every possible human enjoyment, but he wasn't about to pity a weapon made to slaughter planets. "Max," he said again, as his attention had gone back to Angel and Camille. "What do our finances look like?"

"Uh..." Max dug in his pocket for some cred sticks and handed them over. "That's about it," he said.

Georges tapped them against his wrist comm one by one to see the credit readouts. "Damn. This isn't going to make enough for half of it, and these are Imperial sticks, too. Might not be worth the risk."

"Time for another job?" Max asked.

"Do you need help with anything, Captain?" The Angel slipped down off the counter to stand closer to Max.

"Better if it's something low-fuss," Georges said quickly. "Probably not a good idea to let anyone spot our new 'friend'."

"You two always forget that I'm the one with the Flyte account," Camille interrupted. "Maybe I could be included in this conversation?"

"Sorry," Max said quickly.

Camille set the bowl on top of the stove and nudged the Angel out of the way so he could set a projector disc on the counter. Georges and Max joined them to cluster around the projector as Camille opened the Flyte program and began flicking through job requests. "So, what do we want? Something starting nearby, I imagine." He pulled out one area of the map projection to fill the display.

"Alliance payment," Georges said. Camille unchecked a box and nearly half of the job pop-ups vanished.

"No violence or anything," Max said. "Just like, a delivery or something."

Camille narrowed down the selections further. "How about this one?" he said, bringing up the description. " 'Express supply delivery to luxury resort.' That seems straightforward enough, and the pay is high. Pickup is only a few dozen lightyears out—we can make that in one jump."

"Sounds good," Max said. "What do you think, Georges?"

"Looks safe enough," Georges agreed. Things rarely went smoothly for them, so a boring delivery job would be a welcome respite, especially after the last few weeks, which had ranged from 'hectic' to 'terrifying'.

"If we're all agreed then," Camille said, swirling his finger in a circle around the 'accept' option.

"Send me the co-ordinates," Max said. "I'll go plot a course."

* * *

Marie-Anne turned away from the front window of the cockpit as Max entered. "Well, fancy seeing you here," she said, putting on a deep, sultry voice.

Max laughed and blushed. "Come here often?" he replied, trying to mimic her but failing to keep a straight face.

Marie-Anne loved how easy it was to put Max off his guard—his years in space hadn't hardened him at all. It was just extremely concerning whenever he was outside of her reach. And now he had his new robot companion, or pet, or friend, or whatever it was to him. Marie-Anne didn't want anything else around that might be a threat to Max...and if it was too protective of him, that might end up being an issue as well.

Marie-Anne joined in Max's laughter, although she knew it was clear hers was a little less genuine. Max understood her. He wouldn't mind.

"We've picked up a new job," Max said, sitting down in the pilot's seat.

"From Flyte?" Marie-Anne always preferred word-of-mouth jobs, but when they needed money fast it couldn't be helped.

"Yeah. It's just a delivery run. Shouldn't be more than a couple of days, and then we'll make enough to fix up the _Liberte_ again. I'll plot our course to the pickup--why don't you go get some rest."

"Alright." Marie-Anne leaned down to kiss Max's hair lightly as she climbed past the pilot's seat to exit the cockpit.

Marie-Anne casually noted where everyone else was as she walked down the corridor to her own cabin. Camille was working in the kitchen with the Angel helping him with something. The cabin Georges and Camille shared was empty, so he was presumably in the engine room again. He had been shutting himself in there much more lately, presumably to avoid dealing with the Angel, but it suited Marie-Anne perfectly as well.

Once the door of her cabin was firmly shut—and wasn't it lucky that she had a convenient excuse for demanding her own room—Marie-Anne took a damper panel out of her jacket pocket and placed it against the door to ensure that even if one of the others got suspicious they wouldn't learn anything.

With that done, she unlocked her comm and entered the secondary passcode. "This had better be important, for you to contact me directly," she whispered. It had been buzzing at her all morning, but she hadn't had an excuse to slip away until now, and she didn't want him getting the feeling she was entirely at his beck and call, either.

"You know, darling, I'm really getting quite cross about how long all this is taking."

"It's an art. You can't rush it."

"If I didn't know better, I might guess you were planning to break our little agreement."

"Of course not. I'm just...waiting for the right moment."

"I do admire your sense of aesthetics, my dear, but I begin to get impatient."

"...I'll take that into account. Goodbye, Monsieur."

"One more thing."

"What do you want?"

"I want the machine, my dear."

"The...the what?"

"Oh come now, I'm not as much in the dark about what you lot have been up to as you might think, not since you became the favorite topic of the Imperials. I know what you found, and I want it...and you know what happens if I don't get what I want."

"Yes. I understand," Marie-Anne replied.

"Dear Francois has been getting so lonely without you, you know. Well, I won't keep you from your work any longer, my dear. Adieu!"

"Wait! What was that about about—"

The connection was cut off before she could finish the sentence. _Damn him, always baiting me...was that true?_ She had always assumed that Francois was either dead, or had betrayed and abandoned her. If she was wrong, that made everything about her current situation that much more complicated.


End file.
